Courtney Love headed to court over Twitter rant

Courtney Love will stand trial later this month to face allegations of defamation after a fashion designer accused the rocker of damaging her reputation in a series of angry posts on Twitter.com.

The Hole frontwoman fell out with Dawn Simorangkir in early 2009 after reportedly failing to pay the designer for specially-commissioned custom-made clothes.

Simorangkir stopped working for the star as a result, prompting Love to express her outrage online on her microblogging page.

In the messages, Love sensationally claimed Simorangkir was a drug-dealing prostitute with a history of assault and battery. She went on to accuse the designer of using her for her fame and stealing from her.

One post read: “She has received a VAST amount of money from me over 40,000 dollars and I do not make people famous and get raped TOO!”

The scandalous claims prompted Simorangkir to launch legal action against Love in March 2009, accusing Love of embarking on “an obsessive and delusional crusade to terrorise and destroy” her on social networking websites Twitter.com and MySpace.com.

Love attempted to have the case dismissed in October 2009, insisting she is entitled to write about such issues online and that the lawsuit infringes on her free speech, but her argument failed to win over Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Aurelio Munoz.

A trial date has now been scheduled and it is set to be a groundbreaking one – it will be the first high-profile defamation case based on a star’s comments on Twitter.com.

Simorangkir’s attorney, Brian Freedman, says, “There has never been anything like this case before.”

However, Love’s legal representative James Janowitz is confident the rocker’s name will be cleared in due course: “We don’t believe there’s any defamation, and even if there were defamatory statements, there was no damage.”

Love is due to testify in court once the trial gets underway on 18 January (11), according to The Hollywood Reporter.